The present invention relates to a food processor and, more particularly, to a control circuit for controlling a food processing operation time period and the start time of the food processing operation.
A food processor such as a combination type coffee maker of a drip mechanism (pot) with a mill mechanism is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,196,658 issued to Takagi et al on Apr. 8, 1980 which is assigned to the same assignee as this application. Since the mill mechanism in the coffee maker of this type may be operated to mill coffee beans into coffee powder immediately before the drip mechanism is operated to pour the water into the coffee powder to extract coffee, the coffee maker has the advantage of preventing the coffee powder from being wet and losing a flavor of coffee. The coffee mill mechanism includes a cutter coupled with a motor so that a grain size of coffee powder primarily depends on a length of driving time of the motor. Therefore, the coffee mill mechanism is generally designed such that, to adjust a grain size of the coffee powder to a desired value, the motor driving time may be set by a manual switch or a spring driven timer. The former approach, however, has a defect that, since the milling time or the motor driving time is set depending on the intuition of an operator, the setting of the milling time is instable. In the later approach, the time setting operation for the spring driven timer is likely to be inaccurate, thus resulting in an unfixed milling time. Further, for timely providing processed foods, there has been desired a practical food processor which can accurately control food processing time period and automatically start the processing operation of the foods. In the case of coffee maker for example, it is demanded that the operations to mill coffee beans into coffee powder and to make coffee from the coffee powder are started automatically at a given time.